Oh No, Infection!

[evanmit]

I racked my beer the other day and I went to move the fermenter today when I noticed I have a thin "skin" of white furry looking growth on top of my beer (looks similar to iro filings but white). I am guessing this means its infected (probabbly from my racking hose which I found very hard to wash effectively)


Is there anything that can be done to save my brew?

Cheers

 

[Screwtop]

Hi evanmit, have had a few of these lately, different beers, different yeasts, different most things. Noticed it only happened in some fermenters, sometimes I used them for secondary but like you suspected the racking hose. After a recent serious infection in primary, using one of the suspect fermenters I'm now soaking them in bleach for 24 hrs before use to see if that fixes the problem.

If this happens in secondary you can rack off stopping before the film goes into the racking tube. The beer will be ok if the infection has not been there long. I notice that it gives a slightly tart taste to the beer so maybe acetobacter or brettanomyces are present. Taste seems to go with time in the keg/bottle if you catch it early and don't transfer it to keg or bottling bucket. The primary infection is a throw away job.

 

[Barramundi]

could be time for a shorter racking hose or perhaps a 2 or more piece racking hose for simplified cleaning and sterilizing....

 

[evanmit]

have decided to bottle anyway and just try and leave the film in the fermenter....hopefully the beer underneath is still good.

 

[Voosher]

I had a similar situation years ago, bottled it and got away with it so you may as well.
A word of warning. Some infections will eat anything so you may find that a lot of additional unwanted fermentation takes place after bottling which creates the risk of bottle bombs. Check a bottle after a few days to make sure it's not excessively gassed. Ditto after a week or so.
Check your taps. They're one of the most frequent sources of infections. If necessary pull the tap apart to check and clean. Great link here. Cheers Finite.
With the racking hose get yourself a lidded bucket of reasonable size and keep a reasonable volume of a solution of an ortho-phos (or similar) steriliser. I can easily submerge my racking hoses and plenty of other bits and pieces for a good soaking.
Good luck with this batch.

 

[Screwtop]

When it comes to

I noticed I have a thin "skin" of white furry looking growth on top of my beer (looks similar to iro filings but white).

This is a good description of this beastie, looks stirated and geometric not at all like yeast and the film will stick to whatever you put into the wort (hydrometer) and cling to it on the way out. Mostly it just sours the wort, there is no noticable fermentation going on and it doesn't produce additional carbonation or bottle bombs. Infections that cause what looks like Co2 production or a restart of fermentation just don't seem to stop, even though the wort contains very little in the way of sugars (low brix). These are the buggers that cause things to go bump in the night, had an older type thick walled crown seal bottle explode right behind me while mashing once, nearly shite myself, chards of glass went everywhere. Good thing I was facing away, thankfully none went into the mash or kettle or HLT as all where covered, just all over the shed. That was 9 months ago and little pieces of glass are still turning up.

 

[evanmit]

thanks to a suggestion on another forum, I have decided to scoop as much of the skin off as possible with a seive, and add 20g of dextrose to the brew. Hopefully the dextrose will ferment fairly quickly and create a CO2 layer on the beer to kill off the remaining infection and prevent reinfection. If the skin has not grown back in a couple days I shall bottle. If it has, I shall bottle anyway and hope it all works out good.

 

[pint of lager]

Evan,

Usually a white scum indicates an infection that needs oxygen, the techie term is aerobic.

The best solution is to bottle it, leaving the scum undisturbed and about 3-4cm of wort behind. Hopefully this will leave the wort behind that is changed by the infection, meaning minimal off flavour transfer to your beer. Quite a few people have bottled and consumed beer from fermenters showing similar grey growths.

There is no such thing as a protective layer of carbon dioxide. The air above the wort is a gas, and gas molecules mix freely, they do not settle into a protective blanket.

What does happen during fermentation, there is so much carbon dioxide produced, it flushes the headspace leaving mainly carbon dioxide behind.

20gms of dextrose will not produce enough carbon dioxide to flush the headspace. It will not kill off the infection. It will not prevent reinfection. The beer is infected. The only way to kill it off is by heat treating to 125 deg C for 10 minutes. This is not practicable for us homebrewers and would also change the beer flavour. Your only course is to hope it is an infection that needs oxygen to thrive, limit the oxygen, bottle it and cross your fingers it is still drinkable.

Your brew is infected, no amount of scooping or dextrose will change this.

The whole brew (not just the top few cm) will contain spores that can and will reproduce the same infection again. Make sure that your equipment recieves a very good cleaning before the next brew.

 

[razz]

Hey evanmit, did you taste/smell the beer ? :huh:

 

[evanmit]

yeah i tasted and smelt it razz, seems fine...even tasted the scum hehe (probabbly not a very smart idea though)...seemed to be a mixture of sweetness and sour, much like mixing dextrose with lemon juice

 

[razz]

If it tastes/smells okay then it probably is. It's possible that the scum that appeared after racking may be a refermentation. You did not say if you had a consistent gravity reading before you racked this beer. Racking hose would rarely be the source of infection "if" you look after it. You can drink scum if you wish but it's hardly worth it, I'm guessing you know that already ! After your dextrose treatment you may need to rack again before you bottle. Just make sure you're getting consistent hydrometre readings before you bottle.

 

[Screwtop]

Evan,

Usually a white scum indicates an infection that needs oxygen, the techie term is aerobic.

The best solution is to bottle it, leaving the scum undisturbed and about 3-4cm of wort behind. Hopefully this will leave the wort behind that is changed by the infection, meaning minimal off flavour transfer to your beer. Quite a few people have bottled and consumed beer from fermenters showing similar grey growths.

There is no such thing as a protective layer of carbon dioxide. The air above the wort is a gas, and gas molecules mix freely, they do not settle into a protective blanket.

What does happen during fermentation, there is so much carbon dioxide produced, it flushes the headspace leaving mainly carbon dioxide behind.

20gms of dextrose will not produce enough carbon dioxide to flush the headspace. It will not kill off the infection. It will not prevent reinfection. The beer is infected. The only way to kill it off is by heat treating to 125 deg C for 10 minutes. This is not practicable for us homebrewers and would also change the beer flavour. Your only course is to hope it is an infection that needs oxygen to thrive, limit the oxygen, bottle it and cross your fingers it is still drinkable.

Your brew is infected, no amount of scooping or dextrose will change this.

The whole brew (not just the top few cm) will contain spores that can and will reproduce the same infection again. Make sure that your equipment recieves a very good cleaning before the next brew.

Evan, take note of POL's comments, they are hard fact. The sweet taste = wort, sour taste = acetobacter most likely, aerobic infection ala: Vinegar, rack it off.

 

[evanmit]

yep, after 24 hours the scum has returned however nowhere near as bad. I shall bottle the beer off within the next 24 hours and hopefully it will turn out fine.

 

[Batz]

yep, after 24 hours the scum has returned however nowhere near as bad. I shall bottle the beer off within the next 24 hours and hopefully it will turn out fine.

That's a real bummer evanmit,but in my opinion chuck out !
Sure it might come good,maybe after sometime it'll be OK,bottle it and see what happens.....b/s chuck it !

Lifes to short to drink shitty beer

Batz

 

[evanmit]

still tastes fine so I have bottled it, but marked the last 6 bottles to show that they will probabbly be cruddy. Who knows, perhaps I might get something that is at least drinkable out of it. Currently soaking all equiptment in Sodium Metabisulfite.

 

[Stuster]

If you have some napisan, an overnight soak in that would be better than sodium metabisulphate.

 

[Screwtop]

Pretty sure the consensus was that your bug was aerobic, so most likely infection occurred while racking so no problems with sanitisation of gear originally. Would still sanitise everything, sodium met won't do the job, give everything a good soak in bleach to kill the nasties. White King or even the cheap black and white brand, 1 cup in 5L of water and soak for 24 hrs. A couple of litres of this in a fermenter is ok, close it up and give a good shake. Give it a shake a few times over the 24hrs to make sure the bleach comes in contact with all of the inside as much as possible. Dismantle taps, remove O rings and soak everything. Rinse well after. Good luck with the beer, lets know how it turns out after 6 weeks or so.

 

[warrenlw63]

G'day Evanmit.

Haven't read right through this thread so I'm not sure if anbody's suggested it yet but a good idea when you rack your beer to a second fermenter make sure it has little to no headspace. It's going to minimise the amount of O2 that can have it's way with the surface of your beer.

If you can't provide a vessel of lesser volume than your primary fermenter and your beer's only of lowish to average gravity I'm inclined to think that you'd be better served just bottling your beer from the primary provided it's thoroughly fermented and dropped bright. Nothing wrong with racking to a secondary I just think that it's not necessary for all beers.

Warren -

 

[evanmit]

I've always thought bleach couldnt be used in fermenters? I use it on bottles but always thought it was bad for fermeneters...

Looking back, the beer probabbly didn't need racking. In the future I might only rack when I need to, and see if I can grab the portable CO2 canister from dads work to give it a good blast of food grade CO2 just to make sure.

 

[DrewCarey82]

Just have to rinse it with hot water until the bleach smell goes away.